ECI was contracted by McKenzie Electric Cooperative (MEC) to manage the development of 138.5 miles for a distribution system in the eastern part of the Williston Basin. ECI’s primary responsibility was to satisfy any oil related request for electrical service by extending the distribution system (overhead and underground) to the various oil drill pads, production pads, oil tank farms and natural gas compression plants.

After receiving a request for electric services, ECI provided a preliminary job package that included an electrical design with proposed transformer size, a cost estimate, and a contract outlining the responsibilities of all involved parties. This package also included the final design, construction specifications, a bill of materials, signed easements for the proposed primary extension, and a surveyed line route. In conjunction with the final design, ECI verified the available line and substation capacity and reviewed the protection/coordination of any proposed fusing or interrupting line device. After construction was complete, ECI updated the design package to include any required filed changes.

All of ECI’s project designs were completed in accordance with MEC’s overall master plan. ECI processed 250 request annually. The majority of projects required routing, line siting, determining customer load requirements and sizing of equipment. These requests involved private, state, federal, forest service and reservation lands. Line extensions varied from 50 feet to several miles. ECI also estimated and coordinated the conversion of the distribution system from 12.47 kV to 21.6 kV.